Family Forum / Parenting / Mothers / April 2008

DD has a free period in school they can use - within limits - for
pretty much anything they want. choir an band practice in that period,
other kids do HW, Receive some tutoring, read books or go to the
library with attached computer lab to do some computing. Last year the
librarian and 4 aides supervised the kids on the computers so they did
not go anywhere they should not. Some received warnings for IM use or
checking web based e-mail.

Also last year a highschool coach got caught with gay porn on one of
the school computers - nothing illegal but he got fired anyway. This
caused quite an uproar so the district spent way over $100,000 on
security softwar/equipment to make sure that kids and faculty cannot
access any inapropriate sites on the net Which also included all the
IM services and quite a few game sites the kids liked.

Also now that they had all that great protection in place the
librariand does not need the 4 aides to roam the room to see what the
kids are doing on the net. So the district is saving money in the long
run... or not.

At least in DD's school the kids were quite upset and DD the way she
is just took a quick look and after about 10 minutes had figured a way
to bypass the security measures by tunneling and using some free
proxies. Not the kids are much happier now as they can do their IM's
and whatever else they do without having 4 aides roaming around
checking up on what is going on.

Just leaves the teachers who are a bit upset with all the
restrictions. Looks like they have not figured the proxy thing out
yet. But then it was a teacher with the porn and not a kid.  <g>